During World War II a young Frenchmen sees his brother killed in Alsace by a German officer. He vows revenge on all Germans, but after the War he is conscripted into the French Army and sent to Indochina. There he meets his brother's killer under strange circumstances.

A young deserter from the army returns to the place where his father has been killed by a family of Mexican landowners. The task is not easy as he is alone in his efforts to avenge his father's death.

Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, a downtrodden working woman contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world — and potential new life — is opened up to her.